Salma Paralluelo interview: ‘I couldn't give my all because of the pain. I had to stop'

New York Times

2 days ago

When Salma Paralluelo returned from the Olympics last summer, she knew something had to change.
The winger had played football consistently ever since giving up a promising athletics career in 2022 to join Barcelona but the pain was becoming too much and her body was struggling to cope with adapting to the different requirements of the sport.
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'It's hard to stop playing but I had reached a point where I just had to accept it,' Paralluelo tells The Athletic. 'I saw that (carrying on) wasn't going to do me any good. I wasn't going to be able to perform or enjoy myself on the pitch.
'It's upsetting to see your team-mates playing without you, to be away from the group, but I knew it was what I had to do at that moment.'
The Barcelona forward, now 21, took four months out and is now back to full fitness, appearing in her second major tournament with Spain.
This is the story of why she took the unconventional step to pre-emptively stop playing, and how she bounced back just in time to help Spain at Euro 2025.
When Paralluelo was given the chance to join Barcelona in the summer of 2022, she was forced to choose between the two sports she had competed in throughout her youth: football and athletics. Until then, she had played for Villarreal, who allowed her to combine both passions. But when the Catalan club came calling, she chose football.
Even before then, her ability had put her in the spotlight, despite not yet playing for a club of Barca's calibre. She was one of the first players in Spanish women's football to generate major hype long before turning 18. Her athletic physique, speed and dribbling ability made her an eye-catching prospect, and one who many teams wanted to sign.
Although Paralluelo can play as a centre-forward or on the right, her natural habitat is on the left wing.
At the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, she won the tournament's award for best young player. She was only 19 but was crucial for Spain. She scored a 111th-minute winner against the Netherlands in the quarter-final, then gave her side an 81st-minute lead against Sweden in the semi-final. She then started the final in Sydney, where Spain beat reigning European champions England to secure their first Women's World Cup.
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If that was a summer of joy, 2024 was one of disappointment. Spain's women went to their first Olympic football tournament with great expectations, but left empty-handed after losing to Brazil in the semi-final, then Germany in the bronze-medal match. On top of all that, Paralluelo's body was telling her enough was enough.
To understand her pain, we have to go back to the days when she was still playing for Villarreal and training and competing in athletics. Then she suffered one of the worst injuries a footballer can experience.
'In 2021, I injured my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament),' she says during an interview in Lausanne, where Spain have set up camp for Euro 2025. 'After I eventually returned to playing, I could feel slight discomfort in my patella, but I didn't pay much attention at the time. By the time I arrived at Barca (in 2022), the discomfort was quite noticeable. I was training in pain, working out in the gym in pain and it was becoming more and more limiting. By the Olympics, I reached a critical point.
'Playing through the pain only made it worse, and I was at high risk of injury. I couldn't give my all because of the pain.
'That's when I decided to stop. Other players had told me how serious it was, that I should have stopped earlier. But because of my youth, because I didn't want to miss out on cool things like the Champions League and the World Cup, I decided just to keep playing.'
When she made the decision, she found support from her club. Barca gave her everything she needed to recover without rushing.
'They didn't put any pressure on me and helped me realise that I was doing the right thing, that I would recover and have a better future,' she adds.
'I've learned that sometimes you have to put yourself first, approach things sensibly and think about the future, not just what you have in the present. The important thing is to feel comfortable on the pitch and be in good long-term health, rather than doing everything you can to be on the pitch.'
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By the time she returned to Barca in mid-December, the pain she had been feeling for so long had completely disappeared.
'Before, I had been training in so much pain that I was avoiding making certain movements. I was thinking about what to avoid doing so it wouldn't hurt, instead of just thinking about playing football. Now I'm in much less pain.'
One of Paralluelo's strengths is her speed and explosive play, something that the injury prevented her from exploiting.
'It was frustrating to go out on the pitch and not perform as well as I wanted. You can have good games and good spells but it was something I didn't really enjoy. I was limited.'
Paralluelo has spent her whole life preparing for a sport that is played for 90 minutes, football, and another to compete at her best for 40 seconds, athletics.
She competed in athletics at a high level. Her coach Felix Lagunas told The Athletic in 2023 that 'if she had chosen athletics and injuries had respected her, she would have ended up in an athletics final at the Olympic Games for sure'.
'You will have heard of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who broke the world record in the 400-metre hurdles. Or Allyson Felix, who dominated the 200m and 400m during her time. Well, Salma — at her age, without training — was achieving better times than both of them,' he said.
When she stopped training in athletics, she realised she had to readjust the daily routine she had followed for years. She also had to get used to life away from a sport that had played such an important role for so long. 'At first, I really missed the athlete part of me,' she says. 'It's a matter of adapting to football, changing your mindset. In the end, I had to give 100 per cent to one sport. I had to forget about athletics.'
Adjusting her training was a gradual process.
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'In the end, competition demands a lot from you, but together with the staff, myself and the physical trainers, we made that adjustment,' she says.
'I was coming from training (football) two days a week and the other days I was doing athletics, and then I went to training every day with a team as demanding as Barca, and I suffered from those changes.'
Despite her young age, her record is enviable. With Spain, she has won every World Cup she has played in: under-17 (2018), under-20 (2022) and senior (2023), as well as the Nations League in 2024. With Barca, she already has two Champions League titles (2022-23 and 2023-24), three Liga F titles, two Copa de la Reina titles and two Supercopas de Espana.
Now she has the chance to lift one of the few football trophies she has not yet won: the senior European Championship (she won the under-17 title in 2018).
'I've been experienced things from a very young age that you can't really imagine experiencing so early on,' she says. 'But you think about continuing, about the ambition and motivation to repeat something. That's also a stimulus for all of us as athletes, and even more so in this team, and you can tell that we still have the European Championship and the Olympic Games to look forward to as a group. But in the end, what counts each year is the competition you have. What you've already done is in the past.'
In this tournament, she has only started against Italy, but her ability to break down the wings makes her an interesting player for head coach Montse Tome going into Wednesday's semi-final against Germany in Zurich. Tome only reveals her team to the players on the day of the game.
'The job of all the players is to be ready whenever it's time to go into battle,' Paralluelo says.
Does she see herself in the final?
'Not yet,' she replies. 'First, Germany.'